Li Sun Mountain Tian Tsz

Ok, to start off. My favorite oolong is called Dong Ding (or Tung Ting) oolong, and comes from the Tung Ting mountains in Taiwan. This tea is excellent! it is grown at around 600 meters altitude, which makes it nice and green, yet full flavored and sweet. I usually buy this tea from a local shop near my house, but they are out at the moment. As a result i was browsing online and found this tea called Li Sun Tian Tsz, this stuff sounds absolutely incredible. It is grown at an altitude of 2400 meters! and as conventional oolong wisdom goes, the higher the altitude of the oolong the better the flavor

As you can see this tea is quite expensive, but if anyone has any experience with this tea, or this teashop SHING HWA i would be interested to know, as they have some wonderful looking Tung Ting oolongs at a good price (of course shipping is high due to it being shipped directly from taiwan. But if i were to buy this in bulk it could be worth it.)

I haven't heard of your new tea, but I am somewhat familiar with Tung Ting tea grown in Formosa (Taiwan). What is interesting though, is that I have always seen it represented as a very high altitude tea (6000ft+), since it is grown in the Tung Ting mountains. Here's a link to such a description:

Is your local shop's tea only from 600m? That is a huge range of altitudes for this oolong.

sammy8

by illium » Jan 12th, '06, 13:15

I'm not familiar with anything called Li Sun, but based on the description and pictures avilable on the site, I'm pretty sure they mean to called it Li Shan, meaning "Apricot Mountain". That is a very nice Taiwanese Oolong tea, and very expensive. It has a very rich and smooth "buttery" flavour, with gentle fruity overtones. I can definately recommend Li Shan to anyone looking for a very nice lightly-oxidized "green" Oolong.

I'm a private tea seller, dealing in high quality teas, and Li Shan is the second most popular Oolong I handle. Since I import directly from China, and only in small quantities, my teas are always very fresh. Also, my prices are very cheap, because I don't have fancy retail packaging or the associated retail middle-men and markups. For example, the Li Shan Oolong is $3.30/oz for the mid-high grade leaves.

If you're interested in ordering some of this tea (or trying out some other fine Oolongs), you can email me at illium37@yahoo.com.

Hope that helps,
Troy

illium

by illium » Jan 12th, '06, 14:04

oops!

I didn't realize I was on a tea-retailer's forum.

I apologize for posting information about my own tea sales business.

I thought this was just a site for tea enthusiasts like myself. I found it by a link from google to one of the topics.

While we do sell our own great teas, we do not view other tea companies as enemies but colleagues in a fight to spread the good word of tea. As long as the posting is tastefully done (not plastered all over the site meaninglessly), we'll gladly NOT ignore it, but recognize it!

Thanks for having such a good attitude towards other folks in the industry. I completely agree with you on that one. Especially since my business is a small private one, and I don't do flashy advertising of any sort, I really appreciate the work that the bigger companies are doing to make tea more accepted into Western society.

After looking around your site a little, I can see that you guys have a lot of great ideas for community building and creating a sense of tea culture that really locks into the modern American mindset. You guys really seem to care about your customers and give a lot back to them. I can't make any comment on your teas, since I have never tried any of them, but I'll give two tumbs up to your extensive selection of teas and accessories, excellent graphics design, and sharp fashion sense.

The only thing I can see to improve upon would be offering more Pu Er teas. For example - the green Pu Ers (Sheng Pu Er) might be a more accessible intro to people not familiar with Pu Er than your current double firmented black Pu Er Dante (actually, I have no idea which Pu Er this is, other than it's from Yunnan, Iit might be a good idea to mention which on of the hundreds that it could be that it actually is.. hehe).

Since the black Pu Er has a much more "earthy" flavour, which I've heard some of the more severe detracters describe as "tasting like an old leather boot" or simply as "dirty", it might put people off to Pu Er in general as a "first try" for the world of Pu Er. A nice green Pu Er like the MengKu RongSi Ye Sheng Pu er (Wild Green Pu Er from Rong Co. in MengKu, ShuangJiang, LinCang, YunNan) might be a better option as your only Pu Er offering. I see that yours is loose leaf, and I'm not sure if Mr. Rong offers that or not, as I only deal in the compressed 'bing' form of it. The 2004 harvest is not bad and available very cheaply right now.

Also, it's a personal pet peeve, but as I'm sure you know, Pu Ers should be in thier own category, not lumped in with the black teas. Firmented teas are very different from oxidized teas. One could even make the very direct metapher between grape juice and wine. How would you react to seeing a bottle of fine wine lumped in with a shelf full of juices and vinegars, as if it were no different than the rest?

But, hey -- if that's the worst complaint I can come up with, you're doing a pretty good a job!

Li Shan is one of the most intense according to taste and aroma among Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong. Also is one of my favorite Taiwanese tea. The intense peach, fruit aroma and aftertaste can last more then 15 mins., better then chewing gum ':?'. There a some good chatting about even higher grand of THMO in this link: http://chadao.blogspot.com/ On the rarest of all called Da Yu Ling.

Actually, the character on the right on that website says "Li Shan" right there, no need to guess

Real Li Shan tea though are rare. Most of the time they are actually from a subsidiary peak, not Li Shan proper. Some will tell you that this makes a world of difference. Li Shan tea should be very light, needs to be brewed carefully, but will yield a fantastically fragrant cup.

Few years ago, I was up one of the mountain in Nan Tou, tasting and harvesting winter tea. The owner of a farm brew up one of the spring competition Li Shan for us to enjoy using a silver pot over rolling boiled water!

It was my first experience with it and was surprised by the 80 years old solid silver pot first, and was amazed by the rapid heat method. The result was an extra virgin olive oil green liquor with stunning impact of aroma and taste.

Since then, there are debate about temp. level and the strength of the steeping among friends. Any suggestions?